First Ever Solar City Planned for Sunshine State

By Jeff St. John

An artist's rendering of Babcock Ranch, which will be located near Fort Myers, Fla. - Kitson & Partners

A Florida developer wants to build a $2 billion planned community in southwest Florida. If the plans go through, the community would be the first to be entirely powered by the sun.

The Babcock Ranch development, proposed by developer Kitson & Partners, would be integrated with a 75-megawatt, $350 million photovoltaic solar power plant to be built by utility Florida Power & Light.

That's more power than the proposed 17,000-acre, 45,000-resident city is expected to consume, making it entirely solar powered, at least while the sun is shining.

It would place Babcock Ranch in the running with the Masdar City project to become the first "zero-emissions" city. The $22 billion project from Abu Dhabi's Masdar initiative hopes to eventually host 240 megawatts of solar power (Abu Dhabi Picks Suntech, First Solar for 10MW Solar Farm in Masdar City).

Like Masdar City, Babcock Ranch also seeks to integrate a host of green characteristics. The development near Fort Myers would sport 6 million square feet of energy efficient buildings and an integrated "smart grid" to let homes and businesses monitor and control their energy consumption.

And both developments hope to draw a host of green technology startups and research projects to their energy efficient, solar-powered office parks. Babcock Ranch is expected to create about 20,000 jobs when built, in what Syd Kitson, chairman and CEO of Kitson & Partners and former NFL lineman, called a "home base for America's future."

Whether or not Babcock Ranch comes to fruition remains an open question, however, given the poor state of the Florida real estate market. Two other large-scale planned communities have failed to be built in Florida in recent years, the New York Times and Time magazine noted.

Kitson & Partners hopes to see construction in mid-2010. The developer already owns the land and has secured state approval of the project.

Florida Power & Light, however, plans to break ground later this year on the 75-megawatt solar plant whether or not Babcock Ranch becomes a reality.

Florida Power & Light plans to break ground on the 75-megawartt solar plant later this year. The utility is already planning a 75-megawatt plant called the Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center, though that project would involve a solar thermal power plant combined with a natural gas-fired power plant.

It also plans to add 35 megawatts of solar photovoltaic power in two projects, one at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and the other in Desoto County.

The utility's parent company, FPL Group (NYSE: FPL), has a large portfolio of wind and solar power projects, including the 310-megawatt solar-thermal Solar Electric Generating System in California's Mojave Desert.

But the ongoing recession has led FPL to scale back on some of its renewable energy plans (see FPL Cuts Wind Power Plans).

Comments

[billp37:]

We're begining to study solar electric output because of

1 PNM 25 kW Algodones existing solar project
2 Whitman college 23 kW planned solar project
3 a currently SECRET PNM solar project headed by Greg Nelson. Project may be declassified in July 2009, Nelson reported on the phone.

from a nonsense or not engineering standpoint.

fast neutron Santa Fe, NM alerted us to possible nonsense on January 12, 2009

"From actual experience, wind farms produce 1.2 watts per square meter. Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic methods capture 5 to 6 watts per square meter. There is no economy of size in either technology. Dividing the watts you need by those values gives the land area in square meters needed to produce the juice. The numbers are astronomical"

www.topix.net/forum/so...

Note that 1 and 2 are NOT rated in kWh output.

We'll compare to electric output from coal and natural gas plants.

Saturday April 11, 2009 15:01

HEAT RATE

It is expressed as the number of BTUs of heat required to produce a kilowatt-hour of energy.

CAPACITY FACTOR

The net capacity factor of a power plant is the ratio of the actual output of a power plant over a period of time and its output if it had operated at full nameplate capacity the entire time.

LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS - Purdue University engineering school 1960s simplification.

HEAT OUT = HEAT IN - heat loss

Heat is measured in calories or BTUs.

1 kWh = 3412.14163 BTU.

Links at

home.comcast.net/~bpayne37/pnmelectric...

But there is a LOT OF MONEY to be made from solar project investors.

Apr 12 09:33 AM

[ECONOMICS 101:]

Now this interesting says the clan of Johnathan Vrozos. This creates an image from the James Bond era of epic films of an entire city of solar panels. Now I don't know if it makes economic sense but it sure would a sight to see. You know Hollywood would use it as a movie set for a movie starring who else but Sean Connery as 007. All kidding aside if it goes ahead I want to know who is making the panels and who is doing the install. Good luck City of Fort Myers. By Johnathan Vrozos

Apr 12 10:28 AM

[dan-d:]

Great, no more deaths in coal mines. No more deaths fighting for control of oil fields. No more political/economic games by egomaniacal despots around the world. Yeah, compared to these things the cost of wind and solar is really astronomical. So far no soldiers have died half way around the world fighting to gain control of a wind or solar farm. Bring'em on!

Apr 12 10:38 AM

[optionsgirl:]

Plan a new city powered by nuclear energy and I will be the first one to buy a home right next door to the reactor.

Apr 12 12:27 PM

[fran:]

the author of this commentary should contact the chairman of FPL[lew hay] and convince mr hay and staff that their plans are foolish. subsequent to convincing FPL and the florida utility commission of their errors in judgement, summarize status in an SA article to educate the public. that action would be helpful and worthy of attention. the comments offered by author herein are highly questioned, if not silly.


On Apr 12 09:33 AM billp37 wrote:

> We're begining to study solar electric output because of
>
> 1 PNM 25 kW Algodones existing solar project
> 2 Whitman college 23 kW planned solar project
> 3 a currently SECRET PNM solar project headed by Greg Nelson. Project
> may be declassified in July 2009, Nelson reported on the phone.<br/>
>
> from a nonsense or not engineering standpoint.
>
> fast neutron Santa Fe, NM alerted us to possible nonsense on January
> 12, 2009
>
> "From actual experience, wind farms produce 1.2 watts per square
> meter. Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic methods capture 5 to 6 watts
> per square meter. There is no economy of size in either technology.
> Dividing the watts you need by those values gives the land area in
> square meters needed to produce the juice. The numbers are astronomical"
>
>
> www.topix.net/forum/so...
>
>
> Note that 1 and 2 are NOT rated in kWh output.
>
> We'll compare to electric output from coal and natural gas plants.
>
>
> Saturday April 11, 2009 15:01
>
> HEAT RATE
>
> It is expressed as the number of BTUs of heat required to produce
> a kilowatt-hour of energy.
>
> CAPACITY FACTOR
>
> The net capacity factor of a power plant is the ratio of the actual
> output of a power plant over a period of time and its output if it
> had operated at full nameplate capacity the entire time.
>
> LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS - Purdue University engineering school 1960s
> simplification.
>
> HEAT OUT = HEAT IN - heat loss
>
> Heat is measured in calories or BTUs.
>
> 1 kWh = 3412.14163 BTU.
>
> Links at
>
> home.comcast.net/~bpayne37/pnmelectric...
>
> But there is a LOT OF MONEY to be made from solar project investors.
>

Apr 12 12:45 PM

[Investor Co...:]

I find this quite ironic, being someone who lives in the area of SWFL, that they intend on building a Green Solar City amidst what is now a conservation area, wooded, and highly populated area of animals and wildlife that will now be killed off for this ridiculous project. Yes, let's kill off more natural wetlands and animals habitats for something that this area does not need, more construction. If you havent noticed, SWFL is one of the highest foreclosure and unoccupied building areas of the whole country. Also will be interesting to see how well those solar panels hold up in the next hurricane, remember Hurr. Charlie, Frances, Jeanne in 2004-5, all 3 crossed right over this area.

Apr 12 01:02 PM

[carbonates:]

This sounds great! I give it less than 5 year life expectancy. The next hurricane will easily destroy this and leave it in disrepair for at least a few months. The claims that it is "entirely powered by the sun" are of course greenwashing. They will have to connect to the grid and draw on coal, gas, or nuclear power at night. Of course, since coal and natural gas are essentially just stored solar energy, maybe they are telling the truth. Combined with the considerable remaining downward potential of real estate values in Florida, this could be a spectacular failure! Anyone selling derivatives on this thing?

Apr 12 04:38 PM

[smeg:]

Awesome idea! Too bad it will all be underwater in a few decades.

Apr 14 11:54 PM